


A Bridge to Being

by sorenne



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-22
Updated: 2012-07-22
Packaged: 2017-11-10 12:50:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/466490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sorenne/pseuds/sorenne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The angel, Castiel, has ceased to exist. At least, that’s what he tells Dean when they meet in Dean’s dream. He should have known that a Winchester wouldn’t be phased by a technicality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

More often than not, Dean found Castiel in his dreams. The first time, he hadn’t even been looking all that hard. Cas had just appeared there, rumpled trench coat and all.

It had been a disgustingly boring dream. Dean had been sitting on the hood of the Impala, staring out at a sea of endless junkyard. There were no sounds, no smells, and no sensation. Once in a while, a ball of tumbleweed would roll by and spontaneously burst into flame. That was about as exciting as it got.

Dean supposed it was a welcome relief from relieving his not-quite-memories-but-not-really-dreams of Hell. Still, his brain could have at least bothered to conjure up a hot chick or two.

Alas, no scantily clad women materialized.

An overdressed angel, on the other hand, did.

One minute, there was a smoldering tumbleweed in front of him. The next, there was Castiel. The angel did not appear to register his surroundings, never even blinking as he looked straight through Dean.

Now, that was just rude, even for a figment of Dean’s imagination.

The hunter slid of the car and marched up to the angel, idly marveling at his own lack of emotion. If this had been real life, Dean was sure he’d give Cas a hug or something. At the very least, he’d exclaim in surprise.

But dream-Dean seemed to be just as barren of emotion as the landscape around him.

“Hey Cas,” he said, coming to stand in front of the other man.

A few seconds ticked by in silence

“Hey! Earth to angel!” Dean raised his voice, hearing it echo oddly in his own head.

When that failed to provoke a response, the hunter flapped a hand in front of the angel’s face.

Still, Castiel remained as impassive as ever.

“Well, suit yourself,” Dean muttered in frustration, as he shoved his hands in his pockets and returned to his perch on the Impala.

********

For the next two days, Dean barely slept, as he and Sammy tracked a windigo across state lines. He had kept the image of dream-Castiel on the backburner of his mind, flipping back to it when there was nothing else in front of him but an empty road. But even with all of his emotional faculties present and relatively tuned in, Dean found it difficult to feel anything concrete about the dream.

True, he missed his best friend. Missed him more than he thought appropriate to admit. But a dream was just a dream – some clingy part of his mind trying to recreate the angel and failing miserably. The real Castiel was long gone, consumed by a biblical sea monster or - as Dean now referred to it – That Fucking Fish.

But, when he finally flopped down onto a bed, Dean realized that his brain was annoyingly determined.

He dreamed of a glade of pale green. The grass was crunchy under his feet, and the ground around him was obscured by a thin layer of fog. He was pretty sure he was surrounded by trees, though they may as well have been large bushes, or freakishly tall blades of grass.

Castiel was already in the glade when Dean became aware of it. The angel was leaning against something misty and undefined that may have been a tree trunk. His blue eyes were scanning the space in front of him slowly, as trying to plot points on a graph only he could see.

This time, Dean said nothing, deciding that if the stupid figment was going to ignore him, he could ignore it right back. Except, that’s not an ‘it’, that’s Cas, a treacherous part of his mind whispered.

Castiel’s eyes finally landed on Dean and widened slightly. Dean would have liked to say that it was in recognition, but for all he knew, the angel just got some fog stuck in his eye.

The angel’s brows furrowed and he gave Dean a long, assessing look. Then, rather haltingly, he said, “I – I do not believe you are very real.”

“Not real?” Dean echoed incredulously. “Me? You’re the one who’s hanging out in my grassy glade dream.”

Dean would have thought it impossible for the angel’s brows to come any closer together, but they just had.

“This is not you ‘grassy glade dream’, as you put it. It is my state of non-existence,” Castiel replied patiently.

“Bullshit. If you were in a state of non-existence, you wouldn’t be existing here. I made you up, or my stupid brain did, because obviously, it has nothing better to do,” Dean retorted, tone clearly implying that if he could wring his brain’s neck, he would.

“I don’t believe that’s possible…Dean,” the angel said, hesitating before tacking on the name at the end of his sentence. “If one of us has been ‘made up,’ it is clearly you. The real Dean Winchester cannot be here, not even in his dreams.”

It was the note of sadness in the angel’s voice that got Dean to reassess the situation.

“Well, hey,” he started awkwardly. “Whatever this is, let’s make the best of it, yea? We can just hang out here for a while. You, in your non-existence state and me in my dream.”

“That is not possible, Dean,” Castiel repeated.  
And then Dean was awake.

********

“Dean… Dean! Are you okay?”

Dean shook himself out of his thoughts, realizing belatedly that his brother had been trying to get his attention for the past few minutes and

was now getting progressively more worried.

“Yea. Yea, ‘m fine,” he muttered, rubbing tiredly at an eye.  
Sam didn’t look too convinced, but resumed eating his burger. Dean glanced down at his own food, idly twisting a French fry in his fingers. This place should have pie. Why didn’t it have pie?

“Thought you’d inhaled some crumbs and were silently choking to death,” Sam declared through a mouthful of burger.  
“Just thinking, Sammy.”

“Oh, that’s new,” Sam replied, a corner of his lips turning up in a teasing grin.

“Get some new material, Bigfoot,” Dean retorted, narrowing his eyes and gesturing pointedly at Sam with his French fry.

Sam shrugged noncommittally and continued, “So, what has your neurons firing away overtime?”

“Cas,” Dean exhaled slowly, and he could practically see Sam’s expression changed from idle-conversation to concerned-brother mode.

“Dean-“ he began.  
“No, Sammy. Here me out.” And Dean began to talk about the first two dreams – the latest of which he’d dreamt just the night before. Sam pressed him for more details than he had even noticed, and asked him to repeat his brief conversation with Castiel several times.  
When it was all over, Sam looked more thoughtful than concerned. That, in itself, was a relief.

********

Dean entered his third dream with a plan. Well, to be fair, the plan was pretty much all Sammy’s. Still, the dream was his. That had to count for something, right?

They were in a park this time, sitting on a worn bench side by side. A dog was chasing its tail a few feet in front of them. It reminded Dean of the burning tumbleweed. He could have gotten up and shooed the dog away, or he could have just stood up from the bench and walked off. Apparently, he was pretty much in control of his actions in these sorts of dreams – something he hadn’t put much stock in before his conversation with Sam. His brother had called it “lucid dreaming.”

Regardless of the possibilities, what Dean wanted most was to stay on the bench with Cas. So he did.

Time to put The Plan into motion.

“Hey Cas,” he said rather awkwardly.

A messy head of hair swiveled in his direction and he found himself pinned by an intense, blue gaze.

“Dean,” the angel acknowledged.

They stared at each other for a while. When it became clear that Castiel wasn’t going to break the silence, Dean took a shot in the dark.

“So, this non-existence thing? Why is it happening?” the hunter asked, waving his hand arbitrarily, as if to encompass the whole concept.

Seconds dragged by and Dean was all but ready to give up, growing surer and surer that the angel wasn’t going to answer.

“It is an alternative to death of a sort. At the least, that is how I have come to think of it,” Cas began slowly. Dean gave a mental shout-out to Sam for telling him to ask that. Go along with the non-existence angle, his brother had said. If that’s what Cas believes, he’s not going to respond to you acting as if you’re dreaming. At least, this way, he might give you some answers. “God is punishing me for the grave mistakes I have made. It is a just punishment.”

“Come on, Cas. Everyone makes mistakes. We don’t all get stuck in some sort of weird, not-really-there limbo.”

“Does everyone put on the mantle of God and proclaim to be Him, Dean?” Cas retorted testily. At least he was being sarcastic. Sarcastic was a step above impassive, as far as Dean was concerned.

“Hey, we could have dealt with that. It was that fucking fish that we couldn’t deal with.”

“What fish?” asked Cas perplexedly.

“The Leviathon, Cas. The Leviathon. What other fish do you know?” Dean asked, almost rolling his eyes.

“Dean, the Leviathon is not a fish. It is-“

“Yea, yea. Biblical monster, ancient souls, blah, blah, blah.”

They lapsed into silence again. So, Dean found out what Cas thought was happening. A lot go good it did them.

“Hey, Cas?” Dean started. Then stopped, chewed on the inside of his cheek, and started again, “Cas, how dead are you? Are we talking angel-sword dead or ready-to-be-resurrected dead?”

“I am not dead, Dean. I do not exist,” the angel answered patiently.

Now that was just too much.

“What the hell, Cas! You’re right here!” Dean exploded. “You’re in my dream! Except maybe it isn’t my dream, exactly, but it certainly isn’t some stupid realm of non-existence. You’re not- I’m not just imagining you. And you’re not imagining me! Maybe this is some kind of bridge. That’s what Sammy said. That this is a bridge. And that maybe we – I – can pull you across. You know, to our side.”

Dean finished in a rush and glared at Castiel, daring him to even think of disagreeing. Cas did more thank think of it.

“No,” the angel said flatly.

********

“So what, he just refused and you woke up?” asked Sam for the second time.

“I’m telling you, man, he seriously believes in this punishment shit. It’s gonna be hard to convince him to try anything to get out of it,” Dean said, tipping back his head to let the last few droplets of coffee trickle from the mug and into his mouth.

“Two rams butting heads,” Sam mumbled from behind a stack of books, containing every obscure reference to dreaming that they could find.

“Huh?” Dean tore his eyes away from the splotchy stains at the bottom of his cup.

“Nothing. Just comparing you two to sheep,” Sam said – voice all perfect innocence. “Anyway, I think I found something.”

Just for that, Dean let the sheep comment slide. If there was one thing Sam was good at, it was research.

“Says here that there’s a rite that can be attempted ‘to solidify transient consciences’. In many cultures, it’s not uncommon to believe that ancestral spirits may communicate with someone through their dreams. But those spirits are usually remnants of lost souls. Cas is still all there,” Sam said thoughtfully.

“So, we’ll just have to tweak it a little, right? Four table spoons of salt instead of three?”

“More than a little. Because Cas never actually passed into the afterlife and is an angel to boot, we’d need something strong to pull him across into our reality. But even if we get everything done, the ritual wouldn’t be complete without what pretty much amounts to a divine pardon from God.”

“God? Is that guy back in the picture again?” huffed Dean. “He was the one who got Cas stuck in my dreams in the first place.”

“Not in your dreams,” Sam enunciated, as if speaking to a particularly slow child. “He is trapped in a state of non-existence.”

“Goddammit! You too, Sammy?” Dean groaned. “I see him in my dreams, so I’m just gonna keep on saying that he’s in my dreams. Common sense. Non of this existentialist crap.”

“Whatever, Dean.” Sam rolled his eyes. “Point is, we need to anchor Cas to something. And since you’re the only part of reality that is capable of crossing into this shared dream of yours, that’s going to have to be you.”

“You want me to hold on tight to the angel and never let go?” Dean muttered drily.

“Close.” Sam grinned like a cat about to slaughter a particularly juicy mouse. That’s when Dean knew this couldn’t possibly be good. “I want you to form a bond with him that’s going to be strong enough to reestablish his place on Earth. With everything you two have been through, I’m guessing that the emotional component is pretty much all there. You’ll just have to work on the physical.”

“The physical,” Dean echoed.

“Yep,” Sam just kept on smiling.

“And what does that mean, genius?”

“Oh, I think you know what it means.”

Sam’s grin couldn’t possibly get any wider.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The angel, Castiel has ceased to exist. At least, that’s what he tells Dean when they meet in Dean’s dream. He should have known that a Winchester wouldn’t be phased by a technicality.

Dean tossed and turned for half the night, one part of his brain resolutely telling him to do the right thing and go to sleep, while the other insisted that he stay the fuck awake. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t figure out which option was more sensible. On one hand, falling asleep would mean seeing Cas again and putting phase two of Sammy’s plan into action. And that would have been just peachy if that plan didn’t involve him getting “physical” with Cas.

Not _that_ kind of physical, of course. Sam had hooted with laughter for what seemed like hours after Dean had drawn the wrong conclusion. But goddammit, what else was he supposed to think his had brother meant? Sam had called it wishful thinking. But that was as far from the truth as you can get; a couple of million light-years away from the truth, actually.

“So not going there. Don’t want to sleep with Cas at all,” Dean muttered sleepily, his face half-buried in a pillow. So what if he routinely caught himself staring at the angel’s eyes at inappropriate moments? So what if his heart practically stopped and did a backflip when he realized that there may be a way to bring him back?

“Fuck,” Dean said with feeling, punching the pillow half-heartedly.

_All you need to do is hold onto him for a while. The longer you keep touching him, the stronger the connection will be. Just keep your hand on his arm and keep your manly dignity._ Sam had finally managed to get out something useful between his fits of uncontrollable laughter. Dean might have been angrier if he wasn’t so relieved at seeing Sammy more or less relaxed. If the thought of Dean pining after an angel made his brother laugh, then Dean wouldn’t begrudge him that.

Mostly because it might have been just a tiny bit true.

Right.

Back to his options then. Sleep and rescue Cas or keep his eyes open and admit to being a coward.

Dean Winchester slept.

********

 

They were standing on a roof of what must have been a freakishly tall skyscraper, because Dean couldn’t see any other building for miles and miles. He couldn’t see the sun either, though there was certainly light emitting from somewhere. The roof was bathed in pale red incandescence. Bird-shaped shadows flitted across the concrete beneath Dean’s feet, but when he looked up, the sky above him was empty of wildlife.

Castiel stood a few feet away from him, his feet planted on the very edge of the roof. Despite the vulnerable position, the angel looked absolutely immovable – as stiff and immobile as the skyscraper itself.

Still, Dean didn’t appreciate that sort of nonsense.

“Cas, get away from there, will you? I know you can fly and all, but you’re making me nervous,” Dean muttered, shuffling a few steps in his direction and very resolutely _not_ looking over the concrete brink.

Cas turned his head toward the hunter, crimson light sliding over his face like silk. His expression was as blank as it had been in the early days of their acquaintance, but his eyes appeared all the more intense under the red glare.

“You should not be here, Dean.” The words sounded as if they had been ripped from Castiel’s throat. Dean almost rocked back on his heels, caught off-guard by the raw tone. He stared at the angel in shock, trying to reconcile broken voice with impassive expression. “Leave now. It is best.”

“I can’t just leave, Cas. I– This is my dream too. Besides, I need to talk to you,” Dean floundered.

The angel shook his hand like he was trying to shake something loose. He closed his eyes for a moment, facial muscles taut. Dean could see his jaw tightening, as if he was clamping down on something. When the angel opened his eyes again, only to see Dean staring straight back at him, disappointment flashed across his face.

“Please,” Cas rasped.

The words cracked his expressionless façade right in two and Dean was suddenly looking at a broken angel. Primal, unfiltered anguish rolled off him in waves.

“Please,” Castiel repeated, his words directed not at Dean, but straight up at the sky. “I know I deserve this. I do. But do not make me endure his presence. I cannot bear it.”

“Well, thanks for that, Cas,” Dean muttered, feeling inexplicably hurt.

Castiel continued as he hadn’t heard him, “Anything else. Anything at all. Even the tortures of Hell.” The angel’s voice had lowered considerably and there was now a tremble in it that Dean could not possibly stand to hear.

He crossed the space between them in three quick strides, coming up to lay his hand on Castiel’s shoulder. He expected the stiff set of the other man’s shoulders, maybe even an involuntary tremor of muscle. He had not expected Cas to flinch away as if Dean had burned him.

The angel pivoted away from him, wild eyes meeting Dean’s for a heartbeat before one foot met with empty air. He wobbled and Dean instinctively threw out a hand to steady him, fingers curling around the front of his trench coat and pulling him away from the edge.

With Dean’s hand still clutching rumpled, yellow fabric, the two men stood almost nose to nose. Dean could feel the angel’s body pressed up against his and, dammit, Cas was shaking. Actually, full out shaking. Somehow, Dean didn’t think that was due to his almost-fall. But, before Dean could do anything else, Cas brought two palms up to Dean’s chest...

…and shoved the hunter violently, sending him sprawling across the roof at least five feet away. One moment, Dean felt his head make contact with the concrete. The next, he was staring up at a yellowing, motel-room ceiling, with no crimson sky in sight.

 

********

 

For the next five nights, their encounters were much the same - brief and silent. Dean would see the angel standing at some remote spot – a hilltop, a reef, and most notably, in a giant nest on the side of a mountain – and try to approach him. But whenever Dean so much as brushed his hand against the other man, Castiel would start and push him away. Then, Dean would awake, progressively more and more frustrated each time.

 

********

 

It was cold. Not just should-have-worn-a-hat cold, but fingers-falling-off-from-frostbite cold. Dean couldn’t remember ever experiencing such a strong feeling in a dream. Then again, he was pretty sure he’d never dreamt about an iceberg.

The night sky enveloped them - a chiffon robe of airy darkness swishing in the breeze. The dark was studded with stars, glinting brighter than Dean had ever seen. The ice beneath Dean’s feet seemed to be saturated with the night, sucking in the starlight instead of reflecting it.

Castiel was standing atop the massive chunk of ice, watching a group of penguins toddle around some distance away. The angel was somehow managing to keep his footing, whereas Dean was afraid to move a muscle for fear of slipping. Because he didn’t want to break his neck tumbling head over heels onto freaking ice, the hunter stayed put, forgoing the familiar routine of trying to get a hold on Cas.

Dean could only see the other man’s face in profile, but it was more than enough for him to notice the tight lines around the angel’s mouth and the faint frown creasing his forehead. They stood in silence for several minutes, both men seemingly tired of dancing the same old dance.

Finally, Dean couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Cas, why won’t you let me touch you? It’s supposed to help. Sam said it can help bring you back, if you’d just let me try it.”

Dean was met with a wall of silence that was somehow colder than all the ice surrounding them.

“This is cruel.” Castiel’s voice was as flat as it had been during their second dream-world encounter. As much as Dean didn’t miss the anguished, panic-stricken tone, he didn’t see this change as much of an improvement. “I will not be toyed with like this. You are not the real Dean Winchester. You are only a vision sent to torment me. I know I will never have the company of Dean again and your false touch pains me. It serves only to remind me of what I can never have.”

This must be what getting hit upside the head with a potato sack feels like. Dean opened his mouth to reply, closed it, and realized he had no idea what to say to that. Hesitantly, he took a step toward the angel, momentarily forgetting what it was that he was walking on. His foot slipped against the ice and he found himself falling backward.

_Of course, can’t have a dream end without me falling on my head,_ he thought ruefully. A half-second later, he realized that there was a distinct lack of head-cracking-against-ice. A hand was fisted in the front of his shirt, while another grasped his shoulder in a painfully tight grip.

He looked into Castiel’s eyes and saw his own surprise mirrored there. He half-expected the angel to let go then and there, but the grip on his shoulder didn’t weaken. Instead, the hand on his short tugged him forward and Dean straightened slowly, planting his feet far enough apart to keep him balanced. With his back no longer awkwardly arched, the two men were once again standing face to face. Dean could feel Castiel’s warm breath puffing out, ghosting across his cheek. Since when did the angel need to breath?

“Cas,” Dean began carefully, bracing himself against Castiel’s eventual knee-jerk reaction of shoving him away. "Does it feel like I’m not the real Dean?”

The angel’s expression tightened and shattered, a well-spring of pain and grief bubbling to the surface. His eyes were pleading with Dean now- asking him to walk away as much as they were demanding that he stay.

“I- I do not know. You-“ Cas broke off, his hand clenching tighter around Dean’s shoulder.

And damn it, Cas had pulled Dean out of Hell, he’d stood between him and a host of archangels, he’d taken Sammy under his wing –both literally and figuratively – and he’d done his best to make sure that Dean would never have to become Michael’s mindless zombie. Now the angel – _his_ angel – was confused and scared and Dean wasn’t doing a damn thing about it.

“Cas, listen to me. I’m real and I’m here and I’ll get you out. I swear, okay?” Dean murmured soothingly, his lips centimeters away from Castiel’s. “Please, believe me, Cas.”

It was the last few words that seemed to do it for Cas. The beginnings of an uncertain smile flitted across the angel’s lips and he inclined his head in a nod. As he released his hold on Dean and took a step back, the hunter thought he saw a flicker of something in those blue eyes – something uncomfortably like resignation. But when the angel looked back up at him, there was nothing but warmth in those sapphire depths.

“Alright, Dean. I am glad that you are here,” the angel said gravely. “I imagine we have a lot to discuss.”

Dean didn’t particularly relish the prospect of discussing the whole God-Leviathan debacle and he didn’t imagine that Cas was looking forward to it either. So instead, he clapped a hand on the angel’s shoulder and said cheerfully, “Hey, no worries. We can do the serious discussion bit later. How about we do something fun while we’re here?”

“Fun? I do not believe we can find anything you would term ‘fun’ on an iceberg, Dean,” Cas replied.

“Really?” Dean countered. “What do you think fun means to me, then?”

“There are no women, nor beer here. And I do not believe there is pie,” the answered, voice all grave seriousness. But Dean would be damned I he imagined the smile playing across the angel’s lips.

“There are stars though. I bet you know more about constellations than Sammy does. You can point some out to me,” the hunter suggested.

“If this is your dream, Dean, I do not think your mind has the capability to construct constellations with which you are not familiar.”

“Well, damn. We’ll just have to make some up then,” Dean retorted, the beginnings of a grin spreading across his face. He lowered himself to the ground gingerly, bracing his weight on his hands, so as not to slide down the iceberg and into freezing water. Dean was pretty sure that were this a real icerberg, he would have been swimming with the fishes about fifteen minutes ago. Cas sat down next to him, seeming to be much more at ease on the slippery surface.

His grin never wavering, Dean threw his head back and stared hard at the black sky. Hesitantly, Castiel followed suit. After about a minute of thoughtful silence, Dean pointed in the general direction of a star cluster, “Those seven there look like a flamingo.”

Castiel’s brow furrowed. “I do not see it.”

“Come on, Cas. It’s so obvious. That’s the neck and there’s the wing,” Dean huffed out, waving his finger arbitrarily at the sky. “You try one.”

After another full minute of scrutinizing the stars, Cas offered hesitantly, “That cluster resembles a group of fireflies.”

Dean swiveled his head to look at the angel, trying to ascertain if he was being serious or not. Of course, that proved to be completely impossible. Unbidden, a laugh bubbled from his throat, and he rolled with it, laughing until he didn’t think he could ever stop. All the while, Cas looked at him with the familiar expression of patient –albeit confused – indulgence.

********

 

Dean didn’t know how to measure time in a dream, but it seemed to him that he and Cas stayed on that iceberg for hours. When Dean’s neck had started to cramp, he flopped down on the ice, no longer feeling the cold. Even though Cas made it pretty clear that he followed Dean’s example only to humor him, Dean was pretty sure that Cas just didn’t want to admit that he was tired of craning his neck to.

They lay on the glassy surface shoulder to shoulder, pointing out made-up constellations with all the aplomb of astronomy professors. Eventually, the angel got better at seeing shapes in the stars and began coming up with better names for the constellations than “a group of insects,” “snowflakes” and “those corn products that you eat with milk.”

When it seemed like every star within their line of sight had been assigned to a constellation, Dean turned his head to look at Castiel, only to see the angel looking right back at him. It was quite possibly the most awkward situation Dean had ever found himself in – lying next to an angel on an iceberg, their noses practically pressed together.

It was also among the happiest.

Dean was sure he could see electricity crackling between. He was also sure that if a giant whale appeared from beneath them to swallow the icerberg, he wouldn’t be able to stop staring into Castiel’s eyes.

Still, there was only so much tension-building a Winchester could take. So, Dean cleared his throat and broke the silence, “Hey, Cas, you feeling any different? More solid maybe?”

The angel appeared to think for a moment before replying, “No, Dean. I feel as I have felt for as long as I have been trapped in this state. Perhaps the process Sam spoke of takes longer to establish.” _Or perhaps it doesn’t work at all,_ hung unspoken between them.

At that, Dean felt a fierce urge to prove the angel wrong. Because damn it, he could save his angel just like Cas had saved him. He didn’t want to hear the resignation in Cas’s voice ever again.

“Cas,” he murmured. “Maybe we should try something different.”

Not waiting for a reply, Dean shifted his body closer. He lifted his cheek from the icy floor, closing the remaining gap between them, and pressed his lips to the angel’s. Cas huffed out a surprised breath right into Dean’s mouth and the hunter marveled at how warm it felt. He didn’t push anything, just kept his parted lips there, sharing breath with the angel. It wasn’t quite a kiss. Somehow, it was so much more.

After what seemed like hours, but must have only been a few seconds, Dean pulled back to look Cas in the eyes.

“Told you I was real,” he said playfully, mirth dancing in his eyes.

Cas smiled back at him. A strange smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

Just then, Dean began to feel the press of itchy sheets under his back. There was a pillow beneath his head instead of hard ice.

Just as the dream-world began to fade away, Dean heard the angel say distinctly, “Not real at all.”

The last thing he saw before coming awake were Castiel’s eyes – sapphire, bottomless, and breathtakingly sad.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The angel, Castiel, has ceased to exist. At least, that’s what he tells Dean when they meet in Dean’s dream. He should have known that a Winchester wouldn’t be phased by a technicality.

Dean spent the daylight hours in the most irritable of all moods. Another man may have admitted that he was anxious. Not Dean Winchester, though. No, the hunter was only irritable.

Irritable that he hadn’t been able to pull Cas out of his dream.

Irritable that the angel had seemed so depressed in the last moment before their parting.

Irritable that he hadn’t made the kiss last longer than all of five seconds.

Sam was stirring clear of him for the whole day, picking up on the don’t-fuck-with-me attitude Dean wore like armor. When the dingy motel alarm clock blinked 10:00 PM, Dean was already lying in bed, arms crossed behind his head. Sam had safely retreated to a moldy armchair by the window, curling his entire bulk into it with the skill of a contortionist. His laptop may as well have been a concrete wall, affording Dean some privacy and Sam the peace to do his research.

 _And I can fall asleep now,_ thought Dean, keeping his eyes firmly closed. A few seconds ticked by, _Now. How about…now?_ He stayed perfectly still for ten minutes straight, not moving a muscle as he tried to get his stupid brain to fall asleep already.

“Hey, Sammy. I can’t sleep,” Dean muttered, keeping his eyes firmly closed, just in case sleep decided to sneak up on him.

“Of course not. It’s not even your bed time yet,” Sam replied. Dean didn’t have to look to know that his brother’s lips were twitching up in a smirk.

Dean growled something incoherent that sounded suspiciously like a string of curse words jumbled together.

After a beat of silence, Dean heard the tapping of a keyboard and a click, followed by an audible sigh.

Then Sam began reading in a the most boring monotone imaginable, “Blood clotting factors are consumed and the complement system is activated to produce additional cytomodulators which, in conjunction with TNF and leukocyte aggregation, can lead to leukopenia, blood vessel injury and capillary leakage. Endothelial cells are stimulated to produce nitric oxide, which causes vasodilation, hypotension…”*

Endothelial cells, huh? Dean found himself drifting off to sleep within seconds.

********

 

Dean’s feet were buried in a mound of sand. Dry air cracked across his skin, leaving his lips chapped and parched. All he could see for miles was pale sand, sinking and rising in smooth dunes until it faded away at the horizon.

As usual, Castiel was standing only a few feet away from him. This time, the angel looked like he had been expecting Dean’s arrival, staring straight at him instead of off into the distance.

His hair was sticking up at odd angles, obviously disturbed by the desert winds. Dean had the urge to reach out and smooth it, run his hands through it, tangle his fingers in the strands… But Cas was already talking, low and insistent.

“Dean, we must talk.”

“Yea? I was hoping we could do talking later. Maybe finish what we started last time,” Dean suggested, a crooked grin playing on his lips.

He moved to stand close to the angel, resting his hand on the man’s shoulder. Realizing that there was no reason for him to resist the temptation of touching Cas’s hair any longer, he reached out to smooth one of the many stray hairs into place. Until that moment, Cas had been standing absolutely still, though his posture could have been described as relaxed. But as Dean’s fingers brushed across the angel’s forhead, Dean detected a flinch –a barely there twitch.

He could have let it go. It was certainly what he wanted to do. Addressing the issue would mean talking. More talking would mean less kissing. And that was not a scenario Dean appreciated.

But something obviously wasn’t right, so Dean lowered his hand to hang limply by his side, and already hating himself for it, asked, “What’s wrong, Cas?”

Castiel’s eyes widened slightly, as if he was surprised that Dean noticed. As if they haven’t been perfectly attuned to each other for years.

The angel gave a minute shake of his head, dismissing the entire notion. Dean was going to press the issue, because that was what Dean _did_. But before he could open his mouth a second time, he found that it was otherwise occupied.

In the space of a heartbeat, Cas had thrown himself at the hunter, crashing their lips together. Dean felt the angel clutching at his shirt, like a drowning man pulling himself to land. Cas’s movements were insistent, determined, with the perfect hint of desperation.

Dean moaned and opened his lips, letting the angel in. The angel’s lips were dry and papery, but despite the desert air, they tasted, inexplicably, like sea salt. Dean wasn’t quite sure what he may taste like to Cas. For one lucid moment, he fervently hoped it wasn’t like the greasy hamburgers he’d had for dinner. And then, he no longer cared. Because he was finally, _finally_ kissing his angel and he was going to enjoy every damn second of it.

The kiss was pure want – a plea for passion, for redemption, for love. Dean had kissed a lot of people, but he had never been able to use the act as a way of such perfect, wordless communication.

After what seemed like only one action-packed heartbeat, Dean began feeling lightheaded. He gently moved his head back, extricating his mouth from Cas’s.

“Human here, remember? Kinda need to breathe,” he rasped, not quite able to use the full register of his voice.

It was as he was looking into Castiel’s eyes that it occurred to him that they were still in the desert. They were still in his dream. Shouldn’t that sort of physical contact have pulled them out? How long was this goddamn bridge between dreaming and reality anyway?

As much as he would have liked to dive right back in to their activity, Dean decided that this was a pretty worthwhile question to ask, “Hey Cas, how come we’re not moving back to the real world?”

The angel averted his gaze, staring at some point in space above Dean’s shoulder. When he made no move to reply, Dean felt the stirring of that god-awful feeling in his gut.

“Cas, you know why, don’t you?” the hunter all but whispered.

Something in Castiel’s face shifted, like a mask moving back into place.

“Dean, do not do this. You know perfectly well why we are still here." The angel’s tone was calm and expressionless, but the storm in his eyes told a different story.

“Uh, hate to break it to you, but I wouldn’t have asked I knew. I’d much rather get back to what we were doing before.”

“Dean!” The angel all but growled, causing Dean to rock back in shock. “I am here because I was placed here. You are what you have always been in this particular vision – a figment, just a figment. But such a perfect illusion….”

The angel abruptly turned away, just as a wind picked up the desert sand and flung it at them. Dean sputtered and ended up with a handful of sand in his mouth.

“What the hell, Cas! I thought we were over this! I thought we were done with this I’m-not-real bullshit,”” he yelled. But he knew. Deep down, Dean knew that Cas has never really believed.

He was met with a wall of silence and an even stronger gust of airborne sand.

“Why Cas?” Dean snapped. “Why the hell would you pretend if you don’t believe in this?”

“Because, I am weak. Because I would rather delude myself into believing that we are really here together than resist the pull of a vision sent to torment me.” The answer was short and clipped, as if Castiel didn’t trust himself with more words.

“What about this don’t you believe?” Dean struggled to be heard over the noise of the wind. “That I’m here? That this is my dream? That you deserve to be in the real fucking world with the rest of us?”

Castiel’s reply was much quieter than Dean’s, but it carried across the boundless desert. “Because you act as if you-. You act as Dean Winchester would if someone he loves has been threatened. This determination, this insistence on my rescue cannot be real. It is only a test, a game.”

“You fucking moron!” Dean roared, inhaling a snowball’s worth of sand.

The wind was approaching sandstorm standards, whipping at the dunes around them, billowing them out like long-forgotten sails on a ship. Dean coughed, sand sticking in his throat and eyes. He brought up an elbow to shield his face from the onslaught of air, shutting his eyes tightly. So, he felt rather than saw a cool, feathery presence envelope him.

In the space of a heartbeat, it was as if someone had turned off the wind. Dean cautiously lowered his hand and found himself staring at a curtain of feathers.

Dean blinked.

The feathers were still there.

It took him a very confused moment to realize that Castiel had spread out his wings. The wings curved around the two men, effectively shielding them from the storm.

Cas still wasn’t looking directly at him, even as their faces were mere inches apart. Funny that Cas was willing to save even a Dean Winchester who he did not believe to be real.

Dean very much wanted to yell again, but opted for a whisper, mostly on account of the sand clogging his windpipe.

“Stupid angel. Of course, I’d come for you. I care about you. You’re my best friend. I-“

“I know that Dean and I are friends. This is different,” Cas interrupted morosely.

“Would you just let me finish?” Dean hissed. “I don’t know if you’re just oblivious to human nature. Or maybe you’re as obtuse at this as I am. But fuck. You. I,” Dean paused, drew a breath. “Iloveyouokay,” he added, all in one breath.

The expression on Castiel’s face was one of disbelief, surprise, and very, very cautious wonder.

Dean sighed, trying to look anywhere but at the angel. But seeing as they were enveloped in a pair of angel wings, that proved to be rather difficult.

Finally mustering his courage again, he enunciated, “I love you, Cas. Not like I love Sam. Not like I love a best friend. You’re right, it is different.”

Wonder bloomed on the angel’s face like the most exotic flower Dean has ever seen. It was like someone had drawn open the curtains and let out a millennia full of trapped light. Simultaneously, the wings surrounding them drew back.

There was no sand flying all over the place. The air was no longer starved of moisture. Where there had been hills of white, there was now only a flat layer of golden sand.

At the horizon, the sky did not meet a desert, but a calm ocean the color of Castiel’s eyes.

The sky was tinted red again. Not the abrasive crimson of their first dream world meeting, but a soft, pale pink.

Dean did not hear Cas confess his love. He felt it in every grain of sand under his feet, in every gust of ocean air against his face.

Dean wasn’t sure who started their third kiss, just that their lips were locked again. Even as one hand was buried in the angel’s hair, the other pulled at the trademark trench coat, slipping it down Castiel’s shoulders. The embrace proved to be a risky balancing act and the two men soon found themselves tumbling onto the sand, Cas lending non-too-lightly on top of Dean.

It was impossible to tell who was holding on harder, whose hands were where, or even whose tongue belonged to whom.

And in the midst of it all, Dean felt something dig into his shoulder blades and realized, with a sinking heart, that it was a loose mattress spring. Not yet, damnit. Not yet. And then he was no longer feeling a salty breeze on his neck, but the artificial current of an air conditioner.

But even as he felt a bed under him, he felt Cas on top of him. Dean’s arms were still wrapped tightly around his angel, still holding on with all his strength.

And then, they were trapped in that magical moment between dream and wakefulness, where a child might try to carry some of the wonders he has witnessed during the night with him into the morning. And the child would hold on hard and mumble as he came awake. And he would hope against all hope that the magic would be there, that it would cling to him as hard as he clung to it. But when his eyes would finally come open, the boy would see only a familiar room and familiar sunlight – his dream left behind where it belonged. And the boy would not be able to hold onto his dreams long enough to see them come to life.

Dean Winchester held onto his.

********

 

Just like that, they were lying in a creaking motel bed built for one, maybe one and a half people.

They were no longer kissing, just holding one shared breath, afraid to break the precious moment. But they had already passed the breaking point. The bridge was far behind them and they were both safely on the right side.

Dean would have liked to say something profound, but Cas beat him to it.

“I suppose if this had been a test or game of some kind,  I wound have lost now,” the angel murmured contemplatively.

Dean was about to object. Because, really? Was his angel back to doubting him?

But Cas placed two fingers against his lips, effectively silencing him as he continued, “Though without you, there is not much more I care to lose.”

  


********

 

Exactly three minutes later, Sam returned from the bathroom. He had fought angels and demons, been to Hell, faced Lucifer. And yet, he didn’t think he’d ever had such a rapid and conflicted succession of reactions to something in front of him.

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may have been writing a research paper simultaneously with this fic. So, that passage Sam reads? Actually part of my research, pulled from Bacterial Endotoxin in Human Disease by Michael H. Silverman, MD, FACP and Marc J. Ostro, PhD. No copyright infringement intended, of course.


End file.
